Sir Bernard's Stately Homes

Sir Bernard's Stately Homes was a series of British TV comedy series first shown in 1998 on BBC Two and later re-run on Play UK. Only six 10 minute programmes were produced, all written by and starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams. It bore many similarities to the more well-known Rock Profile. The series was directed by Edgar Wright, one of the creative minds behind Asylum, Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, and produced by Myfanwy Moore, who would become the producer of Little Britain.

The central character was Bernard Chumley, played by Matt Lucas, who was already a regular stand-up character of Lucas's and would go on to be a fixture of Little Britain. The show was transmitted from 12 May to 16 June 1998, on BBC2, Wednesdays at 10.20 p.m. In each edition, Sir Bernard and murderer/friend Anthony Rogers would investigate a number of country estates while searching for the Golden Potato, an advertising stunt which would win them a year's supply of Allen's Crisps ("the cheaper crisp!").

  • Episode 1 – Baxter Grange, home of Lord Horatio Nelson
  • Episode 2 – Browning Abbey, home of the archbishop of Mexford
  • Episode 3 – Yates Castle, former home of the Chumleys
  • Episode 4 – Bronson House, country retreat of Princess Anne
  • Episode 5 – Kendall Park, now attached to the country's largest theme park
  • Episode 6 – Stebson Towers, the new home of Sir Elton John

Each house is named after a character or actor from Grange Hill. Further popular culture is revisited at the end of episode 5, in which the pair eat snacks on a rollercoaster dressed as scouts, in a similar fashion to a group of scouts in one legendary edition of Jim'll Fix It. David Foxxe, Paul Putner, Rowland Rivron, Rhys Thomas, and Julie T. Wallace appeared throughout the brief series. The script editor was Barry Cryer.

Famous quotes containing the words stately homes, sir, bernard, stately and/or homes:

    The stately Homes of England,
    How beautiful they stand,
    To prove the upper classes
    Have still the upper hand.
    Noël Coward (1899–1973)

    From alle wymmen mi love is lent
    And lyht on Alysoun.
    —Unknown. Alison. . .

    Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250–1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939)

    We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
    —George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

    It is perhaps the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection ... raise up a stately and unaccusable whole.
    John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    All women are wonders because they reduce all men to the obvious.
    —Geoffrey Homes (1902–1977)